Effects of Parental Divorce or a Father's Death on High School Completion

Abstract

Associations between parental loss and high school (HS) completion were examined in data drawn from 1,761 male and 1,689 female offspring born in wedlock to mothers participating in a nationally representative study. Multiple logistic regression models were conducted predicting HS completion by age 19 among offspring whose parents divorced or father died, compared to offspring of continuously married parents. Models were estimated without and with adjustment for correlated sociodemographic characteristics, including maternal education and age at first childbirth and offspring age at last assessment and race/ethnicity. In unadjusted models, parental divorce predicted a 41% decreased odds of HS completion for males, and paternal death predicted a 79% decreased odds of HS completion for females. In models including sociodemographic risk factors, associations between parental divorce and paternal death reduced slightly. Findings highlight the importance of examining unique risks from paternal death versus parental divorce on educational attainment in male and female offspring. C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Variation in the educational consequences of parental death and divorce: The role of family and country characteristics

“…The educational consequences of parental death were found to be smaller than those of parental divorce, and overall were comparable for children of lowerand higher-educated parents. This confirms ideas from previous studies suggesting that after parental death, children may face a smaller loss in resources and obtain substantial support from family and friends, who (to some extent) take over the role of the deceased parent (Albertini and Dronkers 2009;Sapharas et al 2016;Steele, Sigle-Rushton, and Kravdal 2009).…”

“…Although both experiences lead to family stress, due to either the loss of a parent or conflict between parents, the reduction of resources may be less profound for children who face parental death (Biblarz and Gottainer 2000). This is because in families where a parent has died, children often receive support from extended family members and friends of the deceased parent, who take over some parenting duties and support children's educational attainment (Albertini and Dronkers 2009;Sapharas et al 2016;Steele, Sigle-Rushton, and Kravdal 2009). Children of divorced parents, however, tend to have much less contact with their nonresident parent, as well as that parent's family and friends over time, providing less opportunity to compensate for the loss in parental resources and support (Steele, Sigle-Rushton, and Kravdal 2009;Westphal, Poortman, and Van der Lippe 2015).…”

“…Most research on (variation in) the educational consequences of adverse family events has focused on children who experienced divorce or grew up in a single-parent household (Bernardi and Boertien 2017). Few studies have distinguished between and compared children who experienced parental death and divorce (Hampden-Thompson 2013;Sapharas et al 2016;Steele, Sigle-Rushton, and Kravdal 2009). Nevertheless, these events may have different consequences for children's educational careers, and these consequences may also be differently affected by the context in which children grow up (McLanahan, Tach, and Schneider 2013).…”

The price of loss – how childhood bereavement impacts education

“…Jørgensen et al (2018) found that educational attainment was negatively affected in a group of bereaved children, as they were 61% more likely to attain the lowest educational level. Sapharas et al (2016) concurred with this finding, as they demonstrated that paternal death predicted a 79% decrease in the likelihood of completing high school among female students. A register-based Norwegian study conducted by Burrell et al (2020) explored the impact of parental death on education based on 373,104 individuals, of whom 3,692 had experienced parental death due to external causes (eg accidents, homicides, and suicides) before the age of 18.…”

Parental Separation and Children’s Genetic Influences on Education across 20th Century Birth Cohorts

“…In line with previous research we use parental death as second comparison group to explore the driving mechanisms (e.g., Amato and Anthony 2014; Biblarz and Gottainer 2000;Cherlin, Kiernan, and Chase-Lansdale 1995;Sapharas et al 2016). On the one hand, one might expect that the consequences of parental death are similar to children who lived with both parents because parental death is thought to be considerably more random than parental separation.…”